CULTURE
What is culture?
• Culture is defined as the beliefs, values,
behavior, and material objects shared by a
particular people.
Components of culture
• Material culture
• Nonmaterial culture
• Example of non-material culture
• Here a president gets a Maori greeting
Culture provides a taken for granted orientation to life
1) People assume that their own culture is normal or
natural, when in fact it is arbitrary
2) Culture provides the lens through which reality is
evaluated
3) Culture provides a behavioral imperative of what we
should do, and a moral imperative that defines right
and wrong.
• Culture shock results from contact with
radically different culture that challenges
basic assumptions.
Components of Culture
A. Symbols
• A symbol is something to which people attach
meaning and then use to communicate.
• Symbolic culture includes gestures, language,
values, norms, sanctions.
B. Language
• is a system of symbols (words) that can be
put together in an infinite number of way to
communicate abstract thought.
• Language helps in cultural transmission
C. Values, Norms and Sanctions
• Values are standards that define what is
desirable or undesirable, good or bad,
beautiful or ugly.
• Norms are expected ways of behavior that
develops our values. May either be
proscriptive or prescriptive.
D. Rituals
• Part of non-material culture that has to do
more with behavior than attitudes and rules.
• Customary, often ceremonial activities that
signify a cultures' shared beliefs, values,
and norms.
a) Mores – norms that have great moral
significance
b) Folkways – norms that have less more
significance than mores.
• Sanctions are positive (reward, smile) or negative
(fine, a frown) reactions to how people follow
norms.
Subcultures and Countercultures
• Subcultures – cultural patterns that
distinguish some segment of society of
society’s population
• Multiculturalism – promotes equality of all
cultural traditions
• Counterculture -groups whose values set
their members in opposition to the dominant
cultures
• High culture – cultural patterns of the rich
(elites).
• Popular culture – cultural patterns that are
widespread in society.
• Eurocentric – dominance of European
cultural patterns.
• Afrocentric –dominance of African cultural
patterns in peoples lives.
Cultural Change is promoted by
• Invention
• Discovery
• Diffusion
Discussion
• Identify the cultural values and social norms
that are associated with the automobile.